1868

1868: A visit from Brahms

15 January

Mrs Ingemann dies ("that delightful and to me forever young woman", the diary, 16th). At the Melchiors', HCA see slides (diapositives) being projected for the first time.

16 February

Attends a dinner at the Carlsberg Mansion (along with Rasmus Nielsen), hosted by the brewer J.C. Jacobsen:

"it was like a wealthy country home abroad", there is "machinery to hoist the food. Gas in the stoves and wax candles in the lamps" (the diary, same day). J.C. Jacobsen "proposed a well worded toast to me first; his admiration for the poet and 'he was fascinated by my human qualities'" (same place).

12 March

First note in the diary mentioning contact with Georg Brandes (a conversation at the theatre). Brandes would later be a very influential critic and literary historian, not least as the initiator of the modern breakthrough in Danish literature.

13 March

Horace Scudder writes to HCA proposing that he become a permanent contributor to Scudder's The Riverside Magazine for Young People. He offers HCA a fee of 500 dollars for 12 new stories. This business association with Scudder would result in a total of 2,200 dollars in earnings for HCA in the period until 1875.

17 March

Attends a concert where Johannes Brahms plays the piano, accompanied by the singer Julius Stockhausen.

"The piano music was too dry and bland for my taste, however fine it may have been in quality and presentation" (the diary, same day).

Brahms and Stockhausen visit HCA, and on 23rd he accompanies them to a dinner held by the actor Lauritz Eckardt. Here, HCA declines to read fairy-tales aloud in German, what with 1864 still being fresh in his memory. He later hears that Brahms has caused a scandal by defending Bismarck.